Audience members’ hearts beat together at the theatre

17 November 2017

New research led by the UCL Division of Psychological and Language
Sciences (PaLS) has found that watching a live theatre performance can synchronize
your heartbeat with other people in audience, regardless of if you know them or
not.

The research was conducted by
Dr Joe Devlin, Dr Daniel C. Richardson, John Hogan (all Department of Experimental Psychology) and Dr Helen Nuttall (Lancaster University). The team monitored the
heart rates and electro dermal activity of 12 audience members at a live
performance of the West End musical Dreamgirls. The team found that as well as
alongside individuals’ emotional responses, the audience members’ hearts were
also responding in unison, with their pulses speeding up and slowing down at the
same rate.

Dr Devlin, who led the study, said: “Usually, a group of
individuals will each have their own heart rates and rhythms, with little
relationship to each other. But romantic couples or highly effective teammates
will actually synchronise their hearts so that they beat in time with
each other, which in itself is astounding.”

According to Encore Tickets, 59% of people say they have felt
emotionally affected by a live performance, and 46% say they enjoy the theatre
experience because of the atmosphere that comes with being in the audience.

Dr Devlin said, “Experiencing the live theatre performance was
extraordinary enough to overcome group differences and produce a common
physiological experience in the audience members.”

This synchrony continued even into the interval, between audience
members who knew each other. Dr Devlin explained: “Our hypothesis is that it’s
at this point, the interval, that the audience members are engaged with each
other, discussing the show within their social groups. During this social
interaction with each other, we can see that their in-group arousal
synchronises with each other but not with the audience members as a whole.

“This clearly demonstrates that the physiological synchrony observed
during the performance was strong enough to overcome social group differences
and engage the audience as a whole.”

This research follows the team’s previous findings, which found that
experiencing a live theatre performance could stimulate your cardiovascular
system to the same extent as a 28 minute workout.

The study
was commissioned by Encore Tickets, and will not be published in an academic
journal.